When the mind of a nation is bowed down by any political superstition in its government, such as hereditary succession is, it loses a considerable portion of its powers on all other subjects and objects.
Paine asserts that the acceptance of hereditary succession as a political superstition diminishes a nation's overall intellectual capacity.
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The aristocracy has screened itself too much, and this serves to restore a part of the lost equilibrium.
It was a sort of new form of government that insensibly served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge it from the superstitious authority of antiquity.
They had a cause at stake, on which depended their freedom or their slavery.